Fractals, Skepticism & Things That Interest Me

My Fondest Regret…

This post is going to be wildly off-topic, ridiculously sentimental, and may ramble a bit, so if you wish to read further, please bear with me. It is an open letter to someone I haven’t seen in years and haven’t tried to out of respect for her marital status and any wishes she may have pertaining to this.

Nonetheless, it’s something I simply must get off my chest for reasons that may or may not be expressed here. Here goes…

It’s been since the summer of 1995 when I last met you with your then fiance, whose name I hadn’t the courage to ask, but as I told the two of you then, he’s a lucky guy.

I don’t know if the two of you are still married, and I don’t have to. Like then, as now, I wish you both good health and good fortune wherever you are and regardless of anything happening since our last meeting then.

But though I try to fool myself, and convince myself that I’m past you, your face, your name, your voice…in some way or fashion, every day since that last meeting, you intrude upon my thoughts, and sometimes my dreams.

But always in a good way, nothing that brings me pain, only satisfaction of a good friendship when a messed-up-in-the-head, insecure, clueless nerd like me first met you in high-school, and the way you’ve shaped my views of love and humanity ever since, even though I’ve never dated you, and didn’t ask you out when you offered me the chance.

When you told me to my face that you loved me.

The past is dead, gone forever, but my memories of you last as long as my brain remains operational, as long as a shred of reason and memory lasts. We were friends, and when by chance our paths cross again, if they do, I hope that we remain friends as we parted.

You are one reason I’m a skeptic, but a good one, one that brings joy and meaning to it, not sadness or anger. You’ve NEVER done me wrong.

There are certain ways I will no longer think of you, certain ways that I cannot think of you, for I’m not as hormone-addled as I was in my teens, and there are ways in which I’ve moved beyond that, but the profound way you’ve positively affected my life, despite the fact that what might have been never truly was (my greatest error), and missteps like my last disastrously toxic relationship in 2009 with that woman, with whom my vaunted skepticism was sorely lacking when it was needed, you were and still are the biggest influence on my life, and that I won’t forget, as long as I draw breath.

Thank you.

You even once called me a genius to my face, a term I don’t think that I really merit, that I’ve really earned, but you said it in complete sincerity, in that tone of voice you have when speaking in total honesty. From some, it sounds empty, but from you it was a compliment of the highest order.

Thank you also for that, but it is you who were and no doubt are the genius, not me.

I’m out of your life, as it should be. With a husband and family to care for, and to be cared for by, you don’t need peeps like me interposing themselves intentionally or not. Live your own life, grow, learn, feel joy in every sunrise, and don’t worry about me. That too is how it should be. I won’t seek you out, but if we meet again, I won’t avoid you, and be well, Lilia, be happy, you’ve deeply influenced my taste in and views of women…

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2 responses to “My Fondest Regret…”

Very beautiful, and tragic. I bet it feels good to get it off your chest, though. Oh how we wish we had the head we have now, on our young shoulders back then. I’ve been reading about letters people have written. I particularly enjoy the ones where people write to their younger selves. Maybe you should write to your younger self and tell him what a fool he was? I’d certainly have a lot to say to my younger self.

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I'm a carbon-based bio-organism on a speck of mud and rock orbiting an ordinary yellow star in a backwater region of an insignificant spiral galaxy, in an isolated universe that could be merely one out of endless others -- go figure.